CHALLENGING THE ESTABLISHMENT: CROSS-TEMPORAL AND CROSS- SECTIONAL ANALYSES OF ANTI-POLITICAL-ESTABLISHMENT PARTIES by AMIR-HASSAN ABEDI-DJOURABTCHI M.A., The University of British Columbia, 1995 M.A., Universitat Hannover, Germany, 1992 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES (Department of Political Science) We accept this thesis as conforming to-the required standard TJ^UNIVERSITY OF BRIT^H COLUMBIA December 2001 © Amir-Hassan Abedi-Djourabtchi, 2001 UBC Special Collections - Thesis Authorisation Form Page 1 of 1 In presenting this thesis in partial fulfilment of the requirements for an advanced degree at the University of British Columbia, I agree that' the Library shall make it freely available for reference and study. I further agree that permission for extensive copying of this thesis for scholarly purposes may be granted by the head of my department or by his or her representatives. It is understood that copying or publication of this thesis for financial gain shall not be allowed without my written permission. Department of POLITICAL ZciEvci The University of British Columbia Vancouver, Canada Date — -r http://www.library.ubc.ca/spcoll/thesauth.html 10/15/2001 ABSTRACT Most studies that have examined parties that challenge the political establishment have focused their attention on certain types of 'anti-political-establishment parties' (a-p- e parties), such as left-libertarian parties or right-wing populist parties. It is argued here that before moving on to an exploration of the reasons behind the electoral success or failure of specific a-p-e parties, one should take a closer look at the preconditions for the success of a-p-e parties in general. This makes it necessary to avoid any 'time-specific' or 'ideology-specific' explanations. Consequently, only those explanatory variables that could be tested at any point in time and for any a-p-e party regardless of its position on the left-right political scale were included in this study. Six hypotheses that fulfilled these criteria were selected to be tested using data from nineteen advanced industrial democracies covering the entire 1945 to 1999 time period. These hypotheses stress the importance of the electoral system, political traditions, the economic conditions of a country, the colluding behaviour of the establishment parties, certain party system features and the 'availability' of voters. In contrast to prior research which has often emphasized the importance of socio• economic and institutional factors, the results of the bivariate and multivariate analyses suggest that political variables explain much of the variance in the level of electoral support for a-p-e parties in different democracies, at different points in time. Thus, the economic situation of a country as well as the electoral system do not appear to have a significant impact on the electoral fortunes of a-p-e parties. On the other hand, anti- ii political-establishment parties thrive in an environment where and when the establishment parties are fairly close to each other ideologically and where and when weak partisan attachments make voters available to their appeals. In addition, the behaviour of the establishment parties, especially the mode of interaction between them and the main opposition is very important. That is, a-p-e parties profit from collusion between the main establishment parties, especially in an environment that is characterized by mutual distrust between the governing party(ies) and an opposition that is excluded and sometimes even ostracized. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract ii List of Tables v List of Figures vii CHAPTER ONE Introduction 1 CHAPTER TWO Theoretical Background and Methodology 6 2.1. Why examine Anti-Political-Establishment Parties? 6 2.2. Definitional Problems in the Literature 10 2.3. Defining the Anti-Political-Establishment Party 17 2.4. How to identify an Anti-Political-Establishment Party 21 2.5. Theoretical Background and Prior Research 34 2.6. Research Hypotheses and Methodology 45 CHAPTER THREE Anti-Political-Establishment Parties in Nineteen Democracies 59 CHAPTER FOUR Testing the Hypotheses 143 4.1. Electoral System Features 143 4.2. A Tradition of Strong A-P-E Parties in the Past 150 4.3. The Economic Condition of a Country 163 4.4. Collusion between the Main Establishment Parties 169 4.5. Party System Features 192 4.6. Availability of Voters 212 CHAPTER FIVE Testing Multivariate Regression Models 220 CHAPTER SIX Conclusion 253 Bibliography 261 Appendix A 290 Appendix B 295 iv LIST OF TABLES Table 1. Cases, Election Years and Number of Elections 57 Table 2. Combined Anti-Political-Establishment Party Vote: Descriptive Statistics 58 Table 3. Combined A-P-E Party Vote: Decade Averages for 19 Democracies 141 Table 4. Bivariate Correlations Among Electoral System Type, Effective Threshold and Combined A-P-E Party Score 148 Table 5. Bivariate Correlations Among Average Combined A-P-E Party Scores for the 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s and 1990s 155 Table 6. Bivariate Correlations Among Inflation Rate, Unemployment Rate, Misery Index and Combined A-P-E Party Score 167 Table 7. Requirements for Ballot Access in 18 Democracies (1997) 178 Table 8. State Support to Candidates and Parties in 16 Democracies (1997) 181 Table 9. Years of Grand Coalition Government 183 Table 10. Overall Rankings of 19 Democracies on Party System Cartelisation 185 Table 11. Bivariate Correlations Among the Three Dimensions of Party System Cartelisation 186 Table 12. Bivariate Correlations Between the Three Dimensions of Party System Cartelisation and the Final Overall Ranking on Party System Cartelisation and the Average Combined A-P-E Party Scores for the 1945-1999 and 1980-1999 periods, the 1980s and the 1990s 188 Table 13. Combined Anti-Political-Establishment Party Scores, Party System Polarization and Establishment Party Divergence in 16 Democracies 204 v Table 14. Changes over Time in Combined Anti-Political-Establishment Party Scores, Party System Polarization and Establishment Party Divergence 205 Table 15. Bivariate Correlations Among Party System Features and Combined Anti-Political-Establishment Party Scores 206 Table 16. Bivariate Correlations Among Electoral Volatility, Voter Turnout, Top Two Parties' Vote Share and Combined Anti-Political-Establishment Party Score 217 Table 17. Multivariate Model I 225 Table 18. Multivariate Model I a (including country dummy variables) 228 Table 19. Multivariate Analyses of Party System Features 240 Table 20. Multivariate Model II 247 VI LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1. Scatter Plot of Average Combined A-P-E Party Scores in the 1950s and 1990s 156 Figure 2. Scatter Plot of Average Combined A-P-E Party Scores in the 1960s and 1990s 157 Figure 3. Scatter Plot of Average Combined A-P-E Party Scores in the 1970s and 1990s 158 Figure 4. Scatter Plot of Average Combined A-P-E Party Scores in the 1980s and 1990s 159 Vll CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION In the 1956 election to the French National Assembly, Pierre Poujade's right-wing populist Union for the Defence of Traders and Artisans (UDCA) unexpectedly won 11.7 percent of the votes. It was one of several signs that the Fourth Republic was coming to an end. In 1966 a party named Democrats '66 was founded in the Netherlands with the explicit goal to 'explode' the, then extremely structured, Dutch party system and push for institutional reforms. It gained 4.5 percent of the votes in the 1967 election to the Second Chamber of the Dutch parliament. Six years later Denmark experienced a political 'earthquake,' when the entry of new parties into the party system was accompanied by a sharp rise in electoral volatility. Most spectacular was the sudden rise of an anti-tax protest party, the Progress Party, founded in 1972, which emerged from the election as Denmark's second strongest party. It secured 15.9 percent of the votes. In 1977 the newly formed Australian Democrats obtained 9.4 percent of the first preference votes in the election to the House of Representatives by promising to keep the 'bastards,' i.e., the establishment parties, honest. In 1983 Germany's stable two-and-a- half party system was shaken up when the Greens polled 5.6 percent and thus overcame the 5 percent hurdle to win seats in the 'Bundestag,' making them the first environmentalist party in the Western world to gain representation in the lower house of a national legislature. In that same year the Women's Alliance obtained 5.5 percent of the votes and gained seats in the Icelandic parliament. The biggest winner of the 1992 Italian parliamentary election was the separatist Northern League whose support increased from 0.5 percent in 1987 to 8.7 percent in 1992. It was the last election before the collapse of the post-war Italian party system. One year later Canada experienced its own 'earthquake' election. Support for the governing Progressive Conservatives collapsed and two new parties emerged on the political scene, the right-wing populist Reform Party, based in the Western half of the country, which gained 18.7 percent of the votes, and the separatist Bloc Quebecois, which took 13.5 percent of the votes. Canada's political landscape had changed from one day to the next. Finally, in the 1999 Nationalrat election the far-right populist Freedom Party of Austria - scored 26.9 percent of the votes making it by far the most successful party of its kind in the Western world. At first glance all of these parties do not seem to have too much in common. Some of the parties are located on the right of the political spectrum (e.g., the Freedom Party), others are located on the left of the political spectrum (e.g., the Greens), and some are located in the centre (e.g., Democrats '66).